i agree with all except the last...im a cheap guy, but i tend to give good advice. but then again, im cheap because i enjoy making wise investments with my money, and minimize my spending on shit that isnt going to get me anywhere.

"Don't pay more for the same product you can get cheaper, just because you like the advertising"

This is especially true for management fees you pay to brokers/advisors/fund managers. Over the long-term (which is the lens most of you are looking thru with investments), a manager's ability to beat the market year-after-year and deliver returns over the long term that would out-pace the market are near zilch. It's true. The odds are stacked against a fund manager to beat the free market forces at work. As they should be. Anyone with enough inside information to beat the market is usually vetted out as an inside trader.

Therefore, if fund managers can't beat the exchange index over the long term, why would you pay them money for their product?

It's the sweetest scam going, and very few people talk about it. I highly encourage you to do the math and satisfy yourselves on this point.

2% per year is a lot of money to give to someone who can't beat an ETF, which charges you a fraction of a percent. Think about 1.8% of your money compounding itself over 25 or 30 years. This is not chump change. This is a significant, massive portion of your savings being flitted away by the lure of marketing and the belief that surely, if it's someone's job, they must be good enough to be able to help me beat the Jones'. Not true. Never has been.

The very, very few that have consistently outpaced the free market...well, we know who they are. I guess you could give them all your money, but if they were truthful, even they would tell you that to do so would be foolish. Eventually, they'll loose too. Or they'll die, and the folks who supplant them will lose. But Buffet already mentions that above...diversify.

Sounds like pretty common sense advice from mr. Buffet. I personally follow this advice to a T. My family budgets everything. I'm not rich but I have enough money where I don't need to work for a year if I was forced to.